The Meaning of Ichiro (46 page)

After that, Ohka bobbed up and down between the majors and the minors. On June 1, 2000, at the Triple-A Pawtucket franchise,
he became the third pitcher in the 117-year history of the International League to pitch a perfect game. He displayed his
fighting spirit in other ways as well. During a rain delay in Durham, North Carolina, he got into a fistfight with Korean
teammate Sun Woo Kim. The next day, at the risk of reinforcing popularly held views about the Japanese-Korean relationship,
the two athletes picked up where they left off, coming to blows at the team’s hotel and making it necessary for the police
to intervene. When it was over Ohka needed six stitches to repair a cut mouth.

In 2001 he was traded to the Montreal Expos and began to flourish the following season when Frank Robinson took over as manager
there. Under the quiet, patient stewardship of the former baseball great, who took a personal liking to Ohka, the young man
from Kyoto became one of the better pitchers in the National League, with a record of 13-8 and an ERA of 3.18.

That fall, the youth who wasn’t good enough to stick with the Yokohama BayStars as a second-tier pitcher returned to Japan
as a starter for the visiting major league All-Star team that featured Barry Bonds and Ichiro Suzuki.

It was the first time that most fans in Japan had ever seen him play in Japan. But by then, of course, thanks to NHK and the
Japanese sports dailies, most people in the stands knew who he was.

Tsuyoshi Shinjo had always been known as being a little off-center. A four-time All-Star, a seven-time Gold Glove winner and
one of the most recognizable players in Japan, thanks to his 10-year affiliation with the Central League Hanshin Tigers, Shinjo
was as far from the traditional image of the buzz-cut all-business Japanese ballplayer as one could find in NPB. With his
sharply handsome features, his gleaming white teeth, and his outré fashion sense, which featured leather suits, orange wraparound
sunglasses and eyebrow makeup, he looked more like he belonged in a rock band than in center field. After a peek inside Shinjo’s
locker, one visitor wryly noted, “He’s got more hairspray in there than my wife does in her bedroom.”

He was unconventional in other ways as well. In 1994, his fourth year in baseball, this native of Fukuoka, Kyushu, recorded
a love song (entitled “True Love”), which sold a grand total of 8,000 copies. By the time he reached 28, he had written his
autobiography, entitled “Dreaming Baby.” And he had become so famous for making outlandish statements that a collection of
them were published in a book entitled, appropriately enough,
The Analects of Shinjo.

A sample for your reading enjoyment:

“I am one,” he said, “who wants to be adored by others instead of admiring someone else. I don’t want to follow others, but
rather start something new and have others follow it.”

And:

“What I want from life is to drive a really cool sports car and dress nice.”

Chided by his managers for his casual attitude toward baseball, he was frequently in hot water. In the spring of 1995, while
rehabilitating a sore ankle at the Tigers’ minor league facility, he showed up for practice late, an infraction of the rules
for which he was punished by being forced to sit in the painful
seiza
position (legs folded under the hips) for a full hour, while his teammates practiced around him. After batting only .225
in 87 games that year and being heavily criticized all season long by Tigers manager Taira Fujita for his lack of a work ethic,
he temporarily retired, saying he would rather go into show business than remain under Fujita’s thumb. When Fujita told reporters,
“Shinjo’s behavior must be due to bad upbringing by his parents,” his comments ignited a bizarre public name-calling match
with Shinjo’s mother, who was angered by his comments. By the time voluntary training rolled around the following January,
however, Shinjo had decided to return to active duty.

Shinjo could run like a Nara deer on speed and his arm was almost as good as Ichiro’s. Although he was a .249 lifetime hitter
who could not hit the outside breaking pitch, he rose above himself in 2000 when he batted .278 with 28 home runs, 85 RBIs
and 15 stolen bases. Becoming a free agent, in his ninth year, he unexpectedly turned down several multimillion-dollar, multiyear
offers from Central League teams and, seemingly on a whim, signed with the New York Mets for a reported league-minimum $200,000.

Already dubbed “Airhead” and “Spaceman” by detractors, Shinjo’s decision caused even supporters to question his common sense.
When Shinjo first revealed his plans at a family gathering, a favorite uncle jumped up out of his chair and cried, “What the
hell are you thinking, you idiot?”

“I want to test my abilities,” Shinjo replied, “and I want to have fun playing baseball.”

His unexpected jump to the U.S. reportedly annoyed Ichiro, who, having just signed with the Seattle Mariners, saw his dream
of standing alone as the first Japanese position player in America being usurped.

“What on earth did the New York Mets sign a guy like that for?” he was quoted as saying. “If someone like him can go over
there, the major leagues must not be anything much these days. Putting me and Shinjo together is a joke.”

Shinjo liked the major leagues from the very first day in spring camp when he was told, much to his delight, that the workday
was finished at 1:30. At times, he showed flashes of real talent. He had several important hits during the season and made
some fine defensive plays in center field. What impressed baseball savants the most was the way he always hustled in on ground
balls to the infield to back up in case of an error, something that not all American outfielders could be bothered to do.
In a moment of unguarded enthusiasm, Mets manager Bobby Valentine called Shinjo the best center fielder in the major leagues
after Atlanta Braves star Andruw Jones. Evidently, though, it wasn’t enough. After a first season in which Shinjo had hit
.269 with 10 home runs in 123 games, he was traded to San Francisco.

Playing in different leagues, Shinjo and Ichiro did not have their first MLB meeting until March of 2002, when Seattle hosted
the Giants in an exhibition game in Peoria, Arizona. Witnessing this historic event was longtime San Francisco fan Steve Eigenberg,
who described it thusly: “It was like two street cats eyeing each other for supremacy. Ichiro and the Mariners came out on
one side of the field, while Shinjo and the Giants were on the other, both principals trying hard to ignore each other. Eventually,
at the urging of the battalions of reporters that were glued to them, they met each other briefly in center field, reluctantly
shaking hands, before beating a retreat. It was all over before you could say
sayonara.
You could tell that neither one of them wanted to stay and chat.”

Twenty or so reporters from Japan formed what was dubbed the “Shinjo Patrol.” First in New York and then San Francisco, they
followed their man everywhere. They were required by their organizations back home to file stories on Shinjo every day whether
he did anything newsworthy or not, and since he was spending more and more time on the bench, their daily task became increasingly
more difficult.

Their constant quest for printable information, however useless, began to wear thin on Giants manager Dusty Baker.

“I’m not used to being asked every day about the same person,” Baker sighed, after watching his outfielder hit in the low
.200s for most of the first half of the year. “How much can you say in a 24-hour period?”

In the eyes of the reporters from Japan, everything that happened on the Giants had to be run through the Shinjo filter in
their dispatches or else the people on the desk back in Japan would spike it. Thus, two key hits by Giants outfielder Kenny
Lofton, who had taken away the center field position from Shinjo after joining the team in a midseason transaction, were reported
in the Japanese papers as “Shinjo’s rival gets two hits, scores three.” A homer by Barry Bonds might be described as “a blast
by Shinjo’s friend and teammate.” Reports of Giants games would be headlined “Shinjo starts” or “Shinjo goes hitless” but
often fail to give any non-Shinjo-related details such as who won the game.

With Shinjo languishing on the bench for extended periods of time, one enterprising member of the Shinjo Patrol became so
desperate for a story angle, he took a photograph of his subject to the various strip joints and gay bars in the Castro District,
asking bartenders and patrons alike if the good-looking young man in question had ever patronized their establishments. Hearing
of this, Shinjo became so upset he stopped talking to the Japanese press for a time, instituting a ban on reporters from Japan
entering the Giants’ locker room.

Rival players thought Shinjo a bit of a hot dog, or as Tokyo-based sportswriter Dave Wiggins put it in one of his
Asahi Evening News
columns,
“le grand frankfurter.”
On the rare occasions when he hit a home run, for example, he would fling his bat in the air, or touch home plate with one
hand—just “to be different.” Such acts earned him an occasional pitch in the ribs.

Younger fans took to Shinjo’s flashy style, in particular, the trademark orange wristbands he wore extended all the way back
to his elbows. Shinjo jerseys, T-shirts, sunglasses and other paraphernalia sold well in New York and San Francisco. But their
hero simply couldn’t hit MLB pitching. It wasn’t just outside breaking pitches he had trouble with, it was also the high inside
fastball. Back with the Mets in 2003 and batting .198 in midseason, he was sent packing to the organization’s Triple-A franchise
in Norfolk.

Shinjo’s career did have one bright spot in it. In 2002, he became the first Japanese to play in a World Series, when he started
Game 1 of the 2002 fall classic for San Francisco against the Anaheim Angels. In the order of status-ranking feats back home,
that counted for a lot. It was something that Ichiro had yet to do and that perhaps made all the other sacrifices worthwhile.

Shinjo had left his wife and child behind in Japan so he could remain “hungry” in the U.S. Although he never expressed regret
at giving up all that money back home, he did complain of the loneliness of being a
gaijin
in MLB, and the lack of restaurants serving food he could eat. His advice to others who would follow him: “Bring along a
DVD player and lots of movies from Japan.”

Shinjo became the benchmark for every run-of-the-mill Japanese position player in NPB who was toying with the idea of trying
his luck in the U.S. “Look at what happened to Shinjo” became the watchword—which perhaps convinced some players to stay right
where they were.

In 2001, Kasuhisa Ishii was one of the premier left-handed pitchers in Japan. In nine years with the Yakult Swallows, he compiled
a record of 78-46 with an ERA of 3.38. At six feet and 185 pounds, his strengths were a fastball in the mid-90s and a knee-buckling
curve to go with a slider and a splitter he could throw with great efficiency when he was on. At his best, he was untouchable—a
money pitcher who helped his team win three Japan Championships. At his worst, he was a complete disaster—a pitcher who would
suddenly walk the bases loaded and literally hand the game over to the opposition. Typical of Ishii the Good was 2001 when
he won 12, lost six, and captured the ERA title with a mark of 2.61, helping lead his team to a Japan Championship. Typical
of Ishii the Bad was 1999, when he won eight games, saw his ERA balloon to 4.81, and led his team to a miserable second-division
finish.

To hear Ishii tell it, playing baseball was the last thing he had ever wanted to do. His father, owner of a Chiba-based private
construction business, had pushed him into playing the game as a boy to help him strengthen his lungs and overcome a childhood
case of chronic asthma. Ishii continued to play baseball through high school and when the Yakult Swallows offered him a huge
bonus to turn professional, he accepted.

“I’m not that crazy about baseball,” he would say, even as he achieved stardom. “I’m interested in becoming a film director.”

Said a reporter who followed him closely, “I suspect his attitude is just a pose. He knows he can’t make the kind of money
he’s making doing something else. He talks that way because he thinks it’s cool. If you’re a young guy, it’s hip these days
to be cool and detached.”

His attitude confused his coaches. Ishii did not seem to care whether he was taken out of a close game in the late innings
or not. While most other pitchers on the team wanted to stay in as long as humanly possible, Ishii was always ready for a
hot shower after 100 pitches, which was a problem for the Swallows’ coaching staff, who preferred much higher pitch counts
and, if at all possible, complete games. To make matters worse, Ishii frequently complained of shoulder and arm pains, and
skipped many starts as a result.

His sense of physical conditioning was almost nonexistent. Like many of his young contemporaries, he smoked three packs of
cigarettes a day, habitually consumed Coca-Cola and junk food, and liked to go out; he spent more time soaking in Tokyo’s
bars and clubs than in the trainer’s whirlpool. He once made the news when an alert magazine photographer snapped him climbing
over the fence around the house of his girlfriend, a famous fashion model named Uno Kanda, in defiance of her father’s orders
that the two stop meeting.

In the fall of 1996, after a season in which Ishii had appeared in only eight games because of arm surgery, the Yakult front
office announced they were denying him permission to move out of the team dormitory into an apartment of his own. They deemed
Ishii, 23 years old at the time, “incapable of managing himself.” (To this Ishii replied, “It’s okay with me. I like the dormitory.”)
He also got into hot water with the team’s notoriously strict manager, Katsuya Nomura, who was particularly exercised about
a trip Ishii took to Australia over the subsequent New Year’s holidays with Uno. Since his shoulder was bothering him, said
Nomura, he should have stayed home.